


like smiling when the firing squad's against you

by finalizer



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Gen, Post-Vol2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-03 06:39:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10961775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finalizer/pseuds/finalizer
Summary: A part of him hopes for Yondu to suddenly sit up as if nothing had happened, clap Peter on the back and laugh at him for crying.





	like smiling when the firing squad's against you

**Author's Note:**

> me: no way vol2 can top _we are groot_  
>  vol2: get rekt

For a moment, the cold is overwhelming. It seeps through the layers of Peter’s spacesuit, pushes past the protective layers of leather, of skin, and burrows into his very bones. It has nothing to do with exposure, or faulty mechanics. The cold seeps in amidst the anguish and heartbreak, and makes itself known. It’s panic.

Then he hits the ground hard, one hand braced on the cold steel of the shuttle floor, the other still wrapped in an iron grip around the lapel of Yondu’s jacket. He couldn’t let go.

In a haze the panic spreads, Peter’s palms flying to Yondu’s chest, feeling for a heartbeat, a thin whistle of breath. The spacesuit is too thick, too _in the way_ to gauge any signs of life, and Peter whines in the back of his throat, desperate and helpless, and claws at the release button of the suit with his free hand.

The buzzing in his head is incessant, punctuated solely by his own labored breaths, by the rapid blinks as he urges away distressed tears.

The button doesn’t budge, doesn’t allow for easy extraction like it ought to — somewhere in the back of his mind it registers, for a fleeting moment, that Yondu must’ve tampered with the release mechanism before pinning it to Peter’s coat. _Damn him_.

Peter twists his fingers into the leather of Yondu’s jacket, breathing in gasping, erratic gusts of air, pleading to whatever deity may be listening to give him one more chance, to let him _fix this_. 

Yondu’s eyes are open, glazed over and unseeing, a layer of frost coating his skin, stuck to his lashes; and he’s so still — so impossibly still. Peter has never seen him so quiet.

Another watery sob pushes past his throat, and he feels the ache, his vocal cords worn from screaming himself sore. He palms futilely at Yondu’s chest, over the crisscrossed buckles and ratty zippers, with a renewed desperation. Even if he can’t get his own damn suit off, he can still save — he can still —

Peter feels himself get tugged backwards, hands slipping away from what they were grasping.

“Peter,” says a voice, and he knows that voice, and he knows he’s safe onboard the ship, with his crew, but Yondu isn’t moving — “Peter. I can’t access the release button if you don’t stop thrashing. Breathe, Peter. For a moment, breathe.”

A distant, conscious part of his mind registers this as Gamora’s voice, and he obeys, clenching his jaw, forcing his raggedy breaths to slip out  one by one, one after the other.

The red of Yondu’s eyes is glossy, it’s dull and unblinking. Peter wants to throw up.

It feels like an eternity’s passed — valuable seconds ticking by, seconds that Peter could use to save Yondu, to _plead to the fucking cosmos_ to save him — by the time the sharp, mechanical buzz sounds out, and the suit compresses back into its dormant state.

The moment he’s free, Peter lurches forward, throwing himself at Yondu’s unmoving form. The moment his palms make contact he tries not to flinch away — Yondu is so impossibly cold, the damned ice crystals stubbornly refusing to melt away from the electric blue of his skin. 

He knows the team’s there, because of course they are: Rocket had opened the hatch just in time, and Peter doesn’t want to believe it’s too late. Gamora lingers at his side, on her knees beside him, tentative fingers hovering over Peter’s trembling shoulders. She understands that empty comfort is useless.

Peter hears his own voice cracking over the barely audible whisper. “ _Yondu_ — ” 

A part of him hopes for a reaction; for Yondu to suddenly sit up as if nothing had happened, clap Peter on the back and laugh at him for crying. Because _grown men don’t cry._

Peter swallows back another wretched sob and collapses forward, hands wrapped in the stiff, freezing leather of the overcoat, his head dropping despairingly onto Yondu’s chest. He thinks he feels a tremor, an echo of his movements, but the thought is consumed by another raggedy breath, another startling shiver wracking his spine.

“Peter — I — ” Gamora starts again, and pauses, words silenced by a twinge of concern. There isn’t much in the galaxy that can reduce her to stutters.

“ _Please_ ,” Peter whispers, ignoring Gamora’s interruption. His voice is muffled, his tears soaking into the coat he’s pressed into. He goes as far as wishing his own pathetic tears would melt the ice, as if life were a children’s movie, and he could change the course of the future by pleading hoarse nothings.

This time, Gamora’s touch isn’t as gentle. One moment she’s at Peter’s side, the next she’s got her hands in the collar of his jacket, hauling him up into a sitting position.

“Peter — _Peter, he’s alive_.”

Peter steadies himself, responds with a watery snuffle; then Gamora’s words register and his heart catches in his throat. He _hadn’t_ imagined the infinitesimal movement.

Gamora shouts to someone — Drax, Kraglin, Nebula, _whoever_ — Peter couldn’t care less; the words don’t compute.  Sure enough, Yondu’s chest is heaving with desperate lurches, slight enough to come off as violent shivers. He's struggling to breathe through unresponsive lungs, through a body near frozen solid.

“ _Yondu_ — Yondu, I’m here. You’re — we’re fine. _You’re gonna be okay_.”

The words seem futile even as Yondu’s eyelids flutter, as his chest spams with the inability to draw breath. 

Peter finds himself rooted in place, his mind and body unwilling to cooperate in his state of shock. He lets out a shaky breath, wrapping both his hands around one of Yondu’s, cold and trembling. 

“ _Hey_. Can you hear me? Yondu, you’re gonna be fine.” He turns to Gamora. “Is he — ? _How?_ ”

No sooner does Gamora turn to Peter, Kraglin drops a wadded pile of blankets at her side, seemingly scoured from every cot and laundry pile about the ship. He lingers and watches, unsure, hands twitching with unconcealed anxiety. 

“Could be different temperature sensitivity,” Gamora supplies, focused on the pile, “enhanced physiology — runs hotter than Terrans. Take this — _keep him warm_.”

Peter takes the blanket, then the next, and the next, following the nonnegotiable order. He can’t trust himself to make valuable decisions when his eyes still water with every broken word out of his mouth.

Yondu gives another full-body shudder, eyes blinking almost too rapidly, still glazed over and vacant, but laced with a painful desperation. 

Peter leans forward, fully willing to wrap Yondu in his embrace until he’s once more angry and yelling, and not _dying_ in Peter’s arms.

Gamora stops him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You shouldn’t. We don’t know the extent of the damage. Your body heat could be too much.”

Yondu seems to draw in a haggard, shallow breath, filling the desperate cavity of his lungs. The spasms abate, lessening to incessant shivers and trembling fingertips. 

“He’s breathing. If he regains consciousness — ” she trails off at the horror flashing through Peter’s eyes at the connotation behind the word _if_. Her tone is softer when she continues. “We can only wait and see.”

What feels like hours later Yondu’s breaths even out, raspy but constant, eyes closed. He looks so still one could think he’s sleeping, or — 

Peter forces his morbid thoughts away. _If_. _If he regains consciousness._

 

/

 

Peter startles awake. He shoots an exhausted glare at the nearest viewport, some uselessly sentimental human part of him thinking he could gauge the time of day by looking outside. Predictably, the black expanse of space stares back, dark and unmoving; the ship put on autopilot standby, with each and every of its inhabitants desperate for a few hours of rest.

Once Gamora had deemed it safe — relying more on instinct than on any sort of technical knowledge — they’d moved Yondu, blankets and all, to the least secluded cot on board, in a quiet corner one sliding door away from the main cabin, to keep an eye on potential deterioration, and better monitor his vitals, which didn’t appear ideal.

With the heavy realization that he’s physically incapable of falling back asleep, Peter unravels himself from his sheet-cocoon and treads on bare feet to the main deck for a drink of water. He prays the damn ship _has_ water, and thanks his lucky stars he doesn’t step on anything mushy and unidentifiable along the way, as he had countless times growing up on board.

He crosses darkened corridors and presses onward when he reaches the final set of doors, deep down afraid he’ll walk inside and find Yondu cold and unresponsive.

He clenches his jaw and enters, eyeing the cot. Yondu doesn’t seem to have moved since they left him to rest hours ago, slumped in a half-sitting position against mounds of ratty cushions, obscured by blankets.

Peter catches sight of the rise and fall of Yondu’s chest, and exhales. He lets himself breathe, turns back around and keeps padding towards his destination. His throat feels more raw than it had before he’d gone to sleep, and the dull throbbing in his skull leaves him with the awareness that his eyes are undoubtedly still reddened and puffy from excessive tears. 

To his utter delight, the ancient pipes rattle throughout the room as a meager trickle of water spews from the rusted faucet. Peter holds out a metal can — because the Ravagers are heathens desperately lacking in dishware and cutlery — and waits patiently for a decent amount to accumulate inside.

The pipes whine in response when he shuts off the water flow, and Peter ignores them, knocking back a deep gulp. He takes the rest with him in case he manages to nod off again and wakes up more parched than before.

He makes it halfway across the room before his heart stops in his chest, and the cup of water nearly goes sloshing across the floor.

“That you, Quill?”

The voice is unmistakable, although raspier and far more quiet than Peter’s ever heard it. It takes another moment for the words to sink in, then Peter snaps out of it, flinching like he’d been zapped with a taser.

“Yeah — ” he squeaks, then clears his throat. “ _Yes_ , it’s me, I’m here.”

He reaches out blindly and sets the cup down on the nearest horizontal surface, and drops down on his knees beside Yondu’s cot before his brain can register his movements.

“I’m here,” he mutters, reaching out. “I’m here.”

Yondu’s eyes flicker open, almost black in the dark of the room, still glossy with pain and exhaustion. They dart around the recesses of the room before somewhat focusing on Peter’s face.

He grimaces. “What’re you all worked up for?” 

Peter opens and closes his mouth a few times like a fish, and sits back on his heels in disbelief, the sheer gravity of Yondu’s dumbass question weighing him down.

‘You — you were — you nearly _died_ out there. The hell were you even thinking?”

The ship creaks in response, swaying through space like the sad old wreck it is. 

“I wasn’t,” Yondu says. “Wasn’t no time to think. The rest of ‘em, they — ?”

The question trails off. Peter blinks, uncomprehending. Maybe it’s his now-missing godly counterpart malfunctioning, drawing everything into a haze. Or maybe he’s just had a bad day. A little bit of both, most likely. 

Then: “ _Oh_. Yeah, they’re fine. Everyone’s fine. They’re sleeping. You gave us quite the, uh, scare.” Peter pauses, voice dipping lower. He decidedly refuses to burst into tears in front of Yondu. “Y’know, that was so _unbelievably_ stupid. Don’t you do that again, you hear me? Promise me you won’t do that ever again. I don’t want you to — I don’t want you to die on me, dad.”

The word slips out. It’s too late to backtrack when Yondu scoffs out a rough laugh, somewhere between humored and disbelieving.

Despite the harshness of his tone, his lip quirks up in an almost-smile. “You best not get started callin’ me that, son.”

Peter throws his hands up. “You just called me _son_.”

Yondu closes his eyes and breathes, enunciating his next statement slowly enough for Peter to grasp. “ _It’s a figure of speech_. Now, make yerself useful, Quill, ’n get this shit offa me.”

Peter watches Yondu nudge futilely at the heap of blankets. “No can do. I’m under strict instructions to keep you wrapped up.”

“I ain’t playin’, boy. _Off_.”

The order seems a twinge desperate, paired with the breathless uneasiness of Yondu’s tone, and it takes Peter a few seconds to realize the sheer layer coating his skin is sweat, rather than bucketfuls of thawed ice water. It doesn't look too good, and Peter’s not willing to take any more chances.

He peels off the outermost layers, leaving one thin, threadbare blanket for the sake of it. Yondu’s breathing is still unnervingly shallow, hands trembling against the fabric. His body seems to be in a state of shock, unable to adjust to drastic changes in temperature. But he's alive. He’s alive and he’s already complaining about linguistic inaccuracies.

“You sealed your own fate when you decided to go all touchy-feely during a near death experience, calling yourself my dad,” Peter says smugly, once the unwanted blankets are in a heap on the floor, and he’s once more crouching down, leaning against the side of the cot. “And it’s your own damn fault you thought you could avoid this conversation by kicking the bucket, old man.”

Yondu looks at Peter like he wants to spring to his feet and whistle him to oblivion, but he’s too tired to move his pinky finger an inch to the side, let along manage a melodic peep — quite the paradoxical mixture, though remarkably familiar in dealing with Peter Quill.

“Yet ‘ere we are,” he retorts. He’s too weary to force the fond smile off his own face. “And I still ain’t gon’ talk about feelins’.”

Peter huffs, because there’s no use arguing with a stubborn, half-conscious individual who, until recently, was commonly believed to be lacking a heart, let alone selfless motivations.

“Y’know,” he says instead, “I should go wake Kraglin. He sobbed himself to sleep thinking you wouldn't make it. I’m shocked — here I am finding out people actually _like_ you.”

Yondu closes his eyes to mask the raw affection he’s irritatingly unable to conceal, but doesn’t miss a beat when he snaps back, “You most of all, Quill. Didn’t think ya’d miss me all that much.”

Peter bites at his lower lip, looks down at the ground. How incredibly cliche of Terran sayings to come to fruition — _you don't know what you got till it's gone_. He counts his fucking blessings and looks up. Yondu isn’t gone. 

“I didn’t — I never thought I _would_ lose you. Never imagined it’d come to that. So — just don't do it again, Yondu.”

Yondu watches him with an unreadable expression. His eyes are glassy, eyelids weighed down by sheer dreariness. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking, or whether he’d zoned out and nodded back off without bothering to shut his eyes.

When the silence becomes unbearable, Peter steels himself and admits what he’d been thinking since Yondu first activated Peter’s spacesuit over the scorching remains of Ego’s planet. “I never thought I meant that much to you.”

Time drags on, and Peter stares Yondu down, who in turn stares at Peter like he’d sprouted a second head. But in a nice way; it must be a nice second head. All things considered, he looks content to be sitting in a crowded corner of the ratty, creaking ship with his watery eyed, ridiculous boy.

Finally, Peter gets his response.

“Go get some shuteye, boy,” Yondu fails to find the strength to snap, and the words come out warm. “I’ll still be ‘ere when you wake up.”

Peter’s face folds into a raw smile. “Promise?”

 _Ridiculous_.

“I promise.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this text post](http://badspacedads.tumblr.com/post/160654335202/professor-pastry-dont-imagine-peter-trying-to) but also [this one](http://badspacedads.tumblr.com/post/160907948507/aggressivelywatchingnetflix-lets-be-real-if)
> 
> for the record i feel like the sacrifice was necessary for the full effect of the redemption arc, so this fix-it is meant to fill the gaping hole in my chest rather than alter the perfect ending the movie gave us (cue the tears)
> 
> [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/finaIizer) & [tumblr](http://www.badspacedads.tumblr.com)


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